How to recover deleted videos from Comcast/Motorola DVR DCT 3416?

[cavcdr]

New to forum, of course. Need help recovering recordings on my 3416 that were deleted when an EAS message went out. I'd like to copy them onto a DVD or my laptop. I've seen some of the file transfer threads, but I need to recover the recordings first.

The story: My DVR has worked well for over 2 years. However, over the past few weeks it has sometimes needed rebooting whenever an EAS message was broadcast. The first couple of times, a reset signal from Comcast along with unpluging the DVR did the trick -- all of my lost recordings were recovered. It was about 90% full. This last time I was in the middle of a recording when an amber alert went out. Suddenly, all of my recordings were gone and a reset over the phone was of no help. Fortunately the kids were found, but I I'd like to get my recordings back too. Some were newscasts about my recent deployment, such as our welcome home ceremony. My fiancee is crestfallen about those, and it's not like I can reschedule a newscast for recording or a NFL game where my unit was featured.

Some forums have suggested a factory reset (as opposed to a HDD reset) as a solution. Heck, I'd be willing to send the DVR out to a forensic service -- money no object, including paying $375 for the box.

Tec that came over said there was nothing he could do, and suspected that someone sent a hard reset over the line. However, we are not sure because every reboot came from unplugging the box, not over the phone. Tec advised that the files are likely still there, but knew of no way to re-index/recover them. He suggested a firewire transfer or googling a solution (which I'm doing now), and to not do anything unless someone smarter than us knew of a good solution.

When I was deployed, there was an SF guy whose job was to extract data from captured enemy computers. He helped us when one of our computer's power supply whet bad and refused to reboot/blue screen of death. So I have an innate belief that it can be cracked/recovered if need be, but how? I've been very careful not to overwrite it with new recordings.

Any help would be appreciated, exotic solutions/cost not a factor, at least to me. Many, many thanks!

[jman98]

Comcast encrypts its DVR recordings. Assuming it is even possible to get them back, and I am not willing at all to make that assumption, you'd still have to deal with the encryption. Comcast is not likely (that's a big understatement) to provide you with the encryption key, so assuming there is some miraculous way to get them back, you'd have to do the standard DVR procedure which is to play them back and record in real time to a PC capture card/device or a DVD recorder. "Real time" means one hour of video takes one hour to record.

You may be able to get help from various sources to get your recordings back if they haven't been destroyed and at that point you'll have to do what I talked about to copy them. Your SF guy was likely not dealing with a situation anything like what you have, although I understand why it seems similar to you. First task is to see if its even possible to recover the recordings. DVRs usually use some kind of Linux file system and it may require special tools to see if the recordings can even be recovered. I'm no Comcast DVR expert, so I'm just providing general guidelines here. Comcast legally has to let you record shows, but they don't have to make it easy to do so nor do they have any requirement to make sure you can copy them after you record them. The vast majority of Comcast's technical people are of no help at all. Usually only about 10% of their employees really have the kind of technical knowledge you'd expect. Most of their employees are fairly stupid. It's because they pay bottom dollar wages that they can't retain anybody who's any good, so the odds are huge that anytime you talk to them, the person you get isn't very good. This applies just as well to their technicians who go on site. I used to be a Comcast customer and while I never had a DVR from them, which is why I'm limited in my advice about those, I can assure you from personal experience that the vast majority of their employees won't be able to help you with your problem. You can try calling back and maybe you'll get lucky and get a 10 percenter, but the odds are always against you.

[usually_quiet]

By design, recordings are stored on a DVR's hard drive in such a way as to make copying and doing anything useful with them virtually impossible, and now that some files are corrupted, the task is even more difficult. Unless someone has the tools, skills, and patience to recover, decrypt and re-assemble many small files into individual recordings, your recordings are likely gone for good. Too bad, but that is how it is.

You can try a factory reset, but since the problem is most likely unrelated to the DVR's firmware and software (probably corrupted files on the hard drive), I don't think a full factory reset is likely to help.

Assuming the DVR were to miraculously start working again, capture any high-definition recordings you want to save using a high-definition capture device. A DVD recorder or standard-definition capture device works fine for standard definition recordings. ...and make multiple backup copies, stored on more than one hard drive, or on good optical media. Attempts to do FireWire transfer of existing recordings rarely succeed. There are significant technical hurdles standing in the way in 2015, and even if you get past them, the signal produced when playing back existing recordings is usually scrambled to prevent re-recording.

You could also try talking to the local TV stations that broadcast the events you mentioned on their news and see if they would be willing to provide you with a copy from their archives.

[jman98]

The fact that your tech contact at Comcast suggested a firewire capture is a sure sign you've been dealing with a "90 percenter". I missed out on that part of your post. Sorry. As usually_quiet points out, fireware capture worked YEARS ago with "years" meaning like 3+ years ago. Comcast has long since been removing that capability from everything they give customers. I last used them about 3 years ago before I switched to Uverse and they were desperately trying to get me to swap out my cable box by claiming that it supposedly wouldn't work with their changes to digital broadcasting. Such claims were untrue, but I'm sure a lot of customers fell for it. The cable box I had was a model I refused to let them swap out and it could do firewire output of live TV to a PC or Mac which could capture the video, but it wasn't a DVR. Once the rules got changed so that they no longer required firewire to work and it was completely optional, Comcast quickly set about taking it away. The odds are huge, like maybe 99%, that your DVR has never supported firewire output and going down that path is a waste of time.

You may look for a Comcast DVR forum if one exists somewhere and see if they have any suggestions that might enable your old recordings to show up again on the DVR. If that works then quickly record them to get them off of there, prioritizing the most important recordings as any recovery is likely to be short-lived and your DVR is likely to start behaving badly again.

[Brad]

Some were newscasts about my recent deployment, such as our welcome home ceremony. My fiancee is crestfallen about those, and it's not like I can reschedule a newscast for recording or a NFL game where my unit was featured.

You could also try talking to the local TV stations that broadcast the events you mentioned on their news and see if they would be willing to provide you with a copy from their archives.

This would be my suggestion as well. Forget about the recordings you had, and pursue other sources. When I was a kid, my mother paid a small fee to a local TV station and picked up a VHS copy of a news segment I was briefly visible in. Mind you, I think she asked for it the day after it aired; you should probably get on it ASAP.

I would imagine NFL games should be fairly easy to find, if you can stomach a little copyright infringement to replace your copy. Aren't there people out there who record/collect/trade every game they can? Not to mention files shared online.